Freedom of expression and the press were more affected during this period due to government-imposed limitations through laws that hindered access to public information and criminalized any public employee who offered information or was a source for a journalist. These legislations intensified the climate of concentration and centralization of power that the government has been weaving with the approval of more than 1,500 decrees sanctioned between 2019 and 2024.
The new initiatives are the Personal Data Protection Law, the Law Against Cyber Crimes, and the Anti-Corruption Law. The latter, which will come into force next August, eliminates the professional secrecy of journalists regarding anonymous sources, lawyers, and doctors, and even the confession secrecy of religious figures.
The triad of laws offers an effective mantle of impunity for non-transparent officials, blocks any information about the handling of public affairs, and imposes a gag on the few independent media operating in the country.
The Personal Data Protection Law contains ambiguous provisions that can be used to detain, threaten, or intimidate media outlets into suppressing personal data obtained in their investigations. This legislation creates the "right to be forgotten," even allowing a public official to demand a media outlet hand over personal information to the cybersecurity agency. This agency will have nine months to evaluate the pertinent information; meanwhile, the media outlet cannot publish that information.
The Law Against Cyber Crimes restricts photographing private individuals without consent, even in public places. There is concern that government agents may prevent being filmed or photographed when committing abuses, a common practice based on the prevailing state of exception. The law imposes six to nine years of imprisonment on public employees who reveal unauthorized, unofficial information. It adds that "if the revelation or disclosure results in serious damage to the interests of the State, the penalty may be increased by up to one-third of the maximum indicated."
In the last five years, the press has been a victim of denial and widespread reservation of public information, harassment, threats, restrictions on photojournalists, and selective calls for journalists to press conferences. In this restrictive environment, police and military forces have had an intimidating tool for three years: the state of exception, which is applied in various areas and has been a factor in generating fear and disciplining society, businesses, journalists, and civil society organizations.
A faint sign of hope is the transparency commitments the government made with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It must present a series of audit reports to access a credit of $1.4 billion. The first should have been presented in March, although its content or whether the government complied with this requirement is unknown.
Journalists from El Diario de Hoy and La Prensa Gráfica have been restricted and threatened on at least four occasions with being detained for taking photographs or videos in downtown San Salvador or public places. The intimidations have mainly come from municipal agents in the city and even from Penal Centers during the construction of the new Rosales Hospital.
On January 22, a photojournalist from El Diario de Hoy was surrounded by eight municipal agents.
Days later, another journalist was illegally detained while taking photos of the construction of the main sanatorium in San Salvador, the Rosales Hospital, this time by penitentiary agents without authority to detain or prohibit any activity.
The Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES) denounced that "President Bukele's false accusations further aggravate the situation of the press in El Salvador, taking into account his government's abuses against people considered uncomfortable by the officialdom and in a country without strong institutions or judicial independence."
President Nayib Bukele again attacked journalists and independent media as "employees" of USAID and following a "destabilization agenda," using funds from that U.S. aid agency.
Salvadoran journalist Alba Amaya, who worked for the German media Deutsche Welle (DW) for more than five years, reported in a statement on March 17 that she left the country with her family at the end of 2024 due to increasing attacks on her written and audiovisual work, which included digital harassment, intimidation, surveillance, follow-ups, stigmatizing statements, defamation, and censorship. She accused anonymous users on social networks, official deputies, police, and the military of the aggression. She also reported being photographed several times on the street and that a group of soldiers entered to photograph the interior of her house under the pretext of being on a "fumigation campaign."
The Attorney General's Office (FGR) decided to archive a complaint filed by journalist Claudia Espinoza from La Prensa Gráfica, who was a victim of deprivation of liberty by security agents and censorship of freedom of expression in 2022 when documenting the construction of the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT). Espinoza and other journalists were detained for more than two hours and forced to delete the content of their cameras. The Attorney General's Office determined that her complaint did not proceed because "they were in a restricted access area, where taking photographs and videos is prohibited."
